Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice

1. Introduction

In the post-Rawlsian literature on theories of justice, most of the work

done by mainstream political theorists and philosophers is part of what is
known as “ideal theory.” John Rawls explicitly defined his work as ideal
theory, which he described as a conception of a fully just society. He ac-
knowledged that, with the exception of his analysis of civil disobedience,
he would not pursue nonideal theory. Rawls thought he prioritized ideal
theory for good reasons: “the reason for beginning with ideal theory is
that it provides, I believe, the only basis for the systematic grasp of these
more pressing problems [that we are faced with in everyday life].” He
went on to claim that “the nature and aims of a perfectly just society is
the fundamental part of the theory of justice.”1 Rawls believed that we
cannot develop nonideal theory without first working out ideal theory.
Post-Rawlsian theories of justice have broadly endorsed this view about
the need for theorists of justice to prioritize ideal theory, and the current
literature on social justice is mainly concerned with working out, revis-
ing, refining, and debating the relative merits of different ideal principles
of justice, and the justification of those principles.
In recent years, however, a growing number of political philosophers
have expressed worries about the nature of ideal theory and its domi-
nance in the literature on social justice. Jonathan Wolff has argued that
“ideal thinkers who want to have some impact on reality should pay
more attention to issues of transition.” Amartya Sen considers ideal the-
ory (which he calls “transcendental theory”) neither necessary nor suffi-
cient to guide justice-enhancing policies. He strongly criticizes what he
takes to be the “all or nothing extremism” of ideal theory, and argues for
moving the theory of justice outside that “little corner.” Charles Mills
contends that ideal theory “is really an ideology, a distortional complex
of ideas, values, norms, and beliefs that reflect the nonrepresentative in-

1
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1999), p. 8.

© Copyright 2008 by Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 34, No. 3 (July 2008)

341
342 Ingrid Robeyns

terests and experiences of a small minority of the national population—

middle-to-upper-class white males—who are hugely over-represented in
the professional philosophical population.” Colin Farrelly has also staged
a fierce attack on ideal theory, claiming it to be “inherently flawed.”2
What is one to make of these strong criticisms of ideal theory? What
are the merits and limitations of ideal and nonideal theory, and what is
their proper role? These are the broad questions that I will address in this
essay.3 Yet before we can embark on that task, we have to confront the
problem of the rather different and often conflicting definitions that are
given to “idealize,” “ideal theory,” and “nonideal theory.” I will therefore
first clear the ground by proposing a set of definitions and descriptions,
together with a simple typology of the different types of work that can be
distinguished in the normative social justice literature. One of the key
questions when defining ideal theory is the question of how it relates to
idealizations. I will distinguish ideal theory from idealizations and discuss
how they relate. I will suggest how we could distinguish useful idealiza-
tions from bad idealizations. The last part of the paper briefly discusses the
implications for the practice of ideal theorizing. I will argue that the role of
ideal theory is limited, perhaps more so than generally acknowledged in
the literature, and that these limitations should be much more explicitly
discussed by ideal theorists. I will defend the view that ideal theory does
have a role to play, but that in the daily practice of theorizing about jus-
tice at least three changes are needed: more attention should be paid to
filtering out bad idealizing assumptions, the academic profession should
correct the current academic bias towards ideal theorizing by re-evaluating
nonideal theory, and much more theoretical work remains to be done on
the questions of how to bridge the gap between ideal and nonideal the-
ory, and on clarifying what makes them good rather than bad theories.

2. Normative Social Justice Analysis: A Typology

What are the different types of normative social justice research that we
can distinguish?4 There are, in my view, three different layers of research

2
Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 27 (1998): 97-122, p. 113; Amartya Sen, “What Do We Want From a The-
ory of Justice?” The Journal of Philosophy 103 (2006): 215-38, pp. 235, 238; Charles W.
Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” Hypatia 20 (2005): 165-84, p. 172; Colin Farrelly,
“Justice in Ideal Theory: A Refutation,” Political Studies 77 (2007): 844-64, p. 845.
3
This essay will have a rather exploratory nature. I will propose some working defini-
tions and highlight some distinctions that I think can advance our understanding of these
questions. Nevertheless, the present arguments will remain limited to scratching the sur-
face of a set of difficult metatheoretical questions.
4
I am putting aside work on social justice that is primarily explanatory, descriptive,
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 343

that need to be distinguished: ideal theory, nonideal theory, and action

design and implementation. The last two categories form the nonideal
work in normative social justice research—but they are distinguished by
the fact that action design and implementation is primarily empirical re-
search, in contrast to nonideal theory.
In the following typology, I am not including the radically fact-
insensitive kind of “pure” ideal theory that is best known from the work
of G.A. Cohen.5 This kind of theory does not start from a concern with
addressing social ills and contributing to justice-enhancing practice, but
rather with an interest in knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The cor-
responding conceptions of justice may therefore never be realizable, not
now, not in the near future, and not even in any future that is consistent
with established facts of the biophysical sciences, such as the fact of
gravity or human mortality. Cohen is very clear about his view: “the
question for political philosophy is not what we should do but what we
should think, even when what we should think makes no practical differ-
ence.”6 One could question whether such a “pure” view of the concept of
justice should be considered normative at all. Such a view may have an
inspirational and pure philosophical functioning, but one can raise seri-
ous doubts whether it has any relevance for the practice of justice beyond
such an inspirational role. This kind of hyper-ideal fact-insensitive “pure”
theory raises questions that are even more difficult than the questions
raised by other types of ideal theory. An analysis of hyper-ideal fact-
insensitive “pure” theory will therefore have to wait for another occa-
sion, and we will ignore this category in the typology that follows.7

2.1. Ideal theory

The aim of ideal theory is to work out the principles of justice that should
govern a society, that is, to propose and justify a set of principles of jus-
tice that should be met before we would consider a certain society just. In
Rawls’s words, we ask “what a perfectly just society would be like.”8
When defending and justifying the ideal principles of justice, we assume
full compliance with those principles. However, the often heard shortcut

and non-normative, such as empirical research on what views about social justice are held
by ordinary people. See, for example, David Miller, “Distributive Justice: What the Peo-
ple Think,” Ethics 102 (1992): 555-93.
5
See G.A. Cohen, “Facts and Principles,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (2003):
211-45.
6
Ibid., p. 243.
7
See also Laura Valentini, “On the Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory,” The Journal
of Political Philosophy, forthcoming, section 1.
8
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 8.
344 Ingrid Robeyns

among political philosophers that “ideal theory equals full compliance”

is not very accurate and is potentially misleading, since full compliance
may also hold for principles of justice that do not lead to a just society.
When defining ideal theory, it should therefore be stressed that it is not
about full compliance with any kind of principles of justice, but full
compliance with those principles of justice that are morally required in
order for society to be completely just.
Ideal theory can be comprehensive or partial. If an ideal theory of
justice is truly comprehensive, then that theory would tell us what condi-
tions should be met before each and every instance of injustice is re-
moved. That is one extreme on a continuum where perhaps no contempo-
rary theory is situated. Rather, some ideal theories are more comprehen-
sive than others. Partial ideal theory can be partial in several ways. First,
it may be partial if it specifies the minimal principles of justice, while
leaving open the possibility that if these principles are met, further prin-
ciples of justice would need to be achieved. An example is Martha Nuss-
baum’s capabilities approach, which argues that threshold levels of ten
central human capabilities should be met as the first priority of justice,
while leaving open what justice requires once these thresholds are
achieved by all.9 A second way in which ideal theory can be partial is by
focusing on one domain of justice, such as justice in health, family jus-
tice, gender justice: we may defend principles of justice telling us what is
required for complete gender justice, while remaining silent on all other
domains of justice. Or ideal theory may be partial in a geopolitical sense,
for example, by specifying the conditions that should be met for justice
to be achieved within a nation-state, thereby disregarding justice between
nation-states or on a global scale. Ideal theory may also be partial by re-
stricting itself to spelling out the principles of political justice only, that
is, describing what justice requires from the political institutions and
agents, thereby disregarding what justice may require within private as-
sociations such as universities, religious organizations, or families. Partial
ideal theory could also combine several of these partialities, for example,
by specifying the principles required in order to achieve a threshold level
of justice in health within the borders of one country.
What is the goal of ideal theory so defined? Ideal theory functions as
a mythical Paradise Island. We have heard wonderful stories about Para-
dise Island, but no one has ever visited it, and some doubt that it truly
exists. We have a few maps that tell us, roughly, where it should be situ-
ated, but since it is in the middle of the ocean, far away from all known
societies, no one knows precisely where it is situated. Yet we dream of

9
Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2006).
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 345

going there, and ask ourselves how we could get there, and in which di-
rection we should be moving in order to eventually reach Paradise Island.
Paradise Island can serve as a metaphor for ideal theory. We don’t
know whether it can be reached and no one has ever set foot on the Is-
land. Yet since it is our dream to go there, reaching Paradise Island is our
ultimate goal. It gives us the direction in which we should be moving to
reach a (minimally) just society, or a society that is just with respect to a
particular domain. In other words, whether partial or comprehensive,
ideal justice allows us to determine whether (partial) justice is achieved.
Ideal theory specifies a number of conditions that have to be met before
we consider a certain state of affairs as just. Take Rawls’s theory of jus-
tice: it clearly spells out which principles of justice should be met before
a society can, according to Rawls’s view, be considered fully just. The
same holds for partial theory. For example, in earlier work I have
sketched the outlines of a partial ideal theory of gender justice, by speci-
fying three principles of gender justice. It is highly unlikely that these
principles will ever be met, and meeting these principles of gender jus-
tice may conflict with meeting principles of other types of partial justice,
such as justice between parents and nonparents, or what justice for chil-
dren requires. The only claim that such an account of gender justice
makes is that in order for a society to be considered gender just, these
principles have to be met.10
Saying that ideal theory functions as a mythical Paradise Island may
be taken to imply that it has a direct guiding function for policy and so-
cial change. But so far I have only suggested that ideal theory guides us
by telling us where the endpoint of the journey lies: it does not necessar-
ily tell us anything about the route to take to get to Paradise Island. In
some seas it is dangerous, indeed impossible, to just sail straight in the
direction of the destination. For example, in low seas, one needs a precise
map of the channels in between the sandbanks—and these channels can
make the sailor first head in a very different direction compared to the
track that is direct from an aerial view. If sandbanks move over time, an
island that was once reachable may no longer be within reach—or at least
not until the sandbanks have shifted again. It is not only natural phenom-
ena that may make it impossible for a sailor to sail in a straight line to the
island, but also man-made constraints, such as dangerous shipwrecks.
Similar dangers hold for attempting to draw straight guidelines for public
policies and social action from ideal theories of social justice.
10
Ingrid Robeyns, “When Will Society Be Gender Just?” in Jude Browne (ed.), The
Future of Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 54-74. Note that it
may be the case that gender justice needs to be weighed against other dimensions of jus-
tice, or that the price to be paid to reach a fully gender-just society is considered too high;
these are questions of nonideal theory, which will be discussed below.
346 Ingrid Robeyns

The two other types of normative social justice analysis are both non-
ideal analyses. While the boundaries between these two remaining types
are fuzzy, for heuristic purposes I will distinguish between nonideal the-
ory on the one hand, and action design and implementation on the other.
While the latter builds on theory, it is mainly empirical research.11

2.2. Nonideal theory

In cases in which we are not in a fully just society, we need theory to

guide us for two important tasks: first, to be able to make comparisons
between different social states and evaluate which one is more just than
the other; and, second, to guide our actions in order to move closer to-
wards the ideals of society. The latter is sometimes called the theory of
transition. These two main functions of nonideal theory will be discussed
in this section.
Before discussing how I understand the two main functions of non-
ideal theory, let us first look at how Rawls defines nonideal theory.
Rawls holds that nonideal theory
studies the principles that govern how we are to deal with injustice. It comprises such
topics as theory of punishment, the doctrine of just war, the justification of various ways
of opposing unjust regimes, ranging from civil disobedience and militant resistance to
revolution and rebellion. Also included here are questions of compensatory justice and of
weighing one form of institutional injustice against another.12

To my mind, Rawls is setting us on the wrong foot here, in two ways: on

the one hand, he includes issues that may be argued not to belong to the
domain of nonideal theories of justice; on the other hand, those questions
that would arguably comprise the lion’s share of nonideal theory for
most contemporary theories of justice are only mentioned in passing, and
insufficiently spelled out.
Let us first look at the issues that should arguably not be included in
Rawls’s list of nonideal theory. To start with, one could question whether
just war theory is not simply a different area of moral philosophy, rather
than being part of theories of justice. Something similar could be argued
for issues of punishment. Suppose we are able to develop and justify an
account of the fully just society, and everyone agrees that the principles
of justice do indeed give us an account of complete justice. Suppose fur-
ther that we are able to actually create this society here and now. Then at
this point there may be people who, whilst acknowledging that the soci-

11
I use the word “action” rather than “policies,” since apart from the government
there are also other agents of justice. Justice-enhancing actions do not only include poli-
cies, but also activism and public action by civil society groups or by individuals.
12
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 8.
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 347

ety is just, violate the ideal principles, for example, by murdering some-
one or by violating just property rights (for whatever reason they may
have, ranging from being blinded by passion, to pure self-interest, or be-
ing bored). For these kinds of criminal offenses, we need institutions of
criminal justice based on a theory of punishment. I do not think theories
of justice need to be terribly concerned with this kind of noncompliance,
since it is reasonable to assume that there will always be at least a few
citizens who will violate the laws, whether these laws are just or unjust.
The notion of full compliance should instead be taken to mean that under
ordinary circumstances, most people would comply with the principles.
Whereas issues of compensatory justice and weighing should be properly
dealt with in theories of nonideal justice, issues of war and criminal jus-
tice may require separate theorizing and analysis within moral philoso-
phy.
Moreover, most of the more pressing issues of nonideal theory are
insufficiently stressed in Rawls’s definition of nonideal theory, such as
whether the ideal principles of justice need to be adapted when we are
theorizing justice in nonideal circumstances, or how to weigh the differ-
ent principles of justice. Thus, I propose that we put Rawls’s definition
of nonideal theory aside, and instead focus on what I regard as the two
main functions of nonideal theory: first, to enable us to make compari-
sons between different social states and evaluate which one is more just
than the other (this is what Sen has called comparative justice);13 and
second, to guide our actions in order to move closer towards the ideals of
society. Although these are analytically two different tasks, in practice
they often run together, especially since the latter presupposes the former.
Nonideal theory departs from ideal theory in focusing not on princi-
ples of justice in the perfectly just society, but rather on offering us the
theoretical foundations for figuring out what we have to do in order to
move closer to that society. Nonideal theory should develop the constitu-
tive parts of a theory of justice that are needed in order to bring us one
step closer to justice assessments and policy design. Michael Phillips has
argued that the principles that are appropriate to the ideal world (in
which we assume that everyone would comply with the principles of jus-
tice), are not immediately applicable to nonideal worlds, such as the one
in which we currently live.14 If pressed on this issue, defenders of ideal
theory would not deny this; indeed, they are likely to argue that many, or
perhaps most, of the critiques on ideal theory are due to a misunderstand-

13
Sen, “What Do We Want From a Theory of Justice?”
14
Michael Phillips, “Reflections on the Transitions From Ideal to Non-Ideal Theory,”
Noûs 19 (1985): 551-70. This claim will be further discussed in section 3.3 below.
348 Ingrid Robeyns

ing of its limited role.15 Yet the literature on theories of justice remains
remarkably silent on what, then, precisely is needed in order to make the
transition from ideal theory to nonideal theory and action design and im-
plementation. Perhaps we need to interpret the ideal-theoretical princi-
ples in a context with nonideal circumstances. Perhaps we need to de-
velop a new set of nonideal principles of justice, which are developed by
adding layers of relevant facts from the nonideal world to the ideal the-
ory, using the “theoretical resources” that are available in the ideal the-
ory. To the best of my knowledge, there is no systematic and comprehen-
sive account of what a nonideal theory of justice entails, or on which
methodological basis it would rest. There are some scattered contribu-
tions to the question of how we could go about developing nonideal the-
ory, and also some insightful work within nonideal theorizing about jus-
tice, yet this body of literature remains far removed from a systematic
account of nonideal theory.16
One important part of nonideal theory is the development of princi-
ples for comparisons of justice in different social states. These principles
would have to tackle the difficult issue of how to weigh different princi-
ples and domains of justice, or they may specify priority rules.17 For ex-
ample, Nussbaum’s capabilities theory of justice specifies ten domains of
capabilities that should be guaranteed to all people by the government as
a matter of minimal social justice. She argues that for each individual,
the government should guarantee that minimal threshold levels of these
capabilities are secured. This is an example of ideal theory: if all indi-
viduals have the capabilities at these threshold levels, then, according to
Nussbaum’s theory, minimal justice is attained. However, her theory
does not answer a number of important nonideal questions. For example,
there are many instances in which her theory does not allow us to judge
one situation as more unjust than another. Nussbaum fails to tell us how

15
See for example, Adam Swift, “The Value of Philosophy in Nonideal Circum-
stances,” Social Theory and Practice, this issue, pp. 363-87.
16
For partial answers to the question how we could develop nonideal theory, see Phil-
lips, “Reflections on the Transitions From Ideal to Non-Ideal Theory”; Robert Goodin,
“Political Ideals and Political Practice,” British Journal of Political Science 25 (1995):
37-56; Harry Brighouse, Justice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), chap. 2; and Lisa H.
Schwartzman, “Abstraction, Idealization, and Oppression,” Metaphilosophy 37 (2006):
565-88. For examples of nonideal theory, some of which is explicitly grounded in ideal
theory, see Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic
Books, 1989); Roland Pierik, “Reparations for Luck-Egalitarians,” Journal of Social
Philosophy 37 (2006): 423-40; Tommie Shelby, “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark
Ghetto,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (2007): 126-60; Jonathan Wolff and Avner
De-Shalit, Disadvantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
17
See Goodin, “Political Ideals and Political Practice,” for the consequences that
trade-offs have for the relevance of ideal theory in nonideal circumstances.
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 349

the different capabilities should be weighed against each other, or which

one we should prioritize in case we can only reach threshold levels for
one of them. Suppose we are in situation A, and through policy interven-
tion and social action we can move to only two other social states, B1
and B2. In B1, all capabilities that the individuals had in A are secured at
the same level, except they all have higher levels of the capability health,
and for half of the population this implies that they are now reaching the
threshold level for this capability. In B2, all capabilities that the indi-
viduals had in A are secured at the same level, except they all have
higher levels of the capability knowledge, and for half of the population
this implies that they are now reaching the threshold for this capability.
All other things equal, which social state is to be preferred from the point
of view of social justice? Nussbaum’s theory fails to give an answer to
this question, or to sketch out a procedure for deciding on such matters in
a democratic fashion. Thus, her theory lacks important parts of nonideal
theorizing.
Another important area of nonideal theory is how to make choices
between different domains of partial justice theory. For example, theo-
retical principles of gender justice establish when society will be gender
just—but realizing gender justice may be in tension with realizing other
demands of justice, for example, what justice requires for children, or
what justice between parents and nonparents entails. At present, ideal
theory is not performing that task. That may be because in practice all
existing ideal theories are to more or lesser degrees partial theories, and
thus their incompleteness means that the theory doesn’t tell us what to do
if different dimensions of justice come into conflict. Depending on how
an ideal theory is developed, it may also be the case that it does not have
the resources to tell us what to do if different dimensions come into con-
flict. In either case we need to rely on nonideal theory of justice to spell
out how we will make trade-offs between different domains of partial
justice. Nonideal theory also entails an analysis of how to make trade-
offs between the ideals of social justice and other values, such as effi-
ciency, stability, or sustainability—since these choices inevitably have to
be made when considering justice-enhancing policies.

2.3. Action design and implementation

Ideal and nonideal theories of justice tell us what ideals we are striving
for, how different principles of justice should be weighed against each
other, how justice needs to be balanced against other values, and how to
deal with instances of widespread noncompliance. Yet this is not suffi-
cient for the design of action (including policies); therefore we need the
help of social scientists. When designing actions (especially policies), we
350 Ingrid Robeyns

also need to take into account a whole range of feasibility constraints and
unintended consequences.
Regarding feasibility constraints, it is important to distinguish be-
tween those that we have good reason to take as virtually unalterable by
society, versus those that are more contingent. These feasibility con-
straints can be situated on a continuum, from the completely unalterable
(such as human mortality or the dependency of human life on the pres-
ence of oxygen) to the much more adaptable. For some, the position on
this continuum is not fixed over time; some constraints will be unalter-
able today, yet may become feasible in the future thanks to technological
change or a change of societal values and our self-understanding. Surely
a century ago people could not have imagined that one day there would
be a safe and accessible method of birth control that did not require com-
plete sexual abstinence. Yet this social change arguably has important
consequences for a range of moral questions. Similarly, we may not
know which constraints that currently seem unalterable will become al-
terable in the future. For example, the constraint that men cannot become
pregnant seems at present rather unalterable, but we cannot preclude the
possibility that at some point in the future this would change. Examples
of constraints that are clearly much more socially constructed and
amendable are that people’s social rights depend to a significant extent
on the passport(s) they hold, or that societies have a dominant set of so-
cial norms that may hamper the realization of principles of justice. When
designing policies or justice-enhancing actions, one needs to be aware
how amendable certain constraints are.
Unintended consequences are very important in policy and strategy
design, and explain why so many well-intended policies do not contrib-
ute to the realization of the intended ideals. For example, not taking into
account the identity-related sensitivities of the population may produce
unintended consequences.
Once we are confident that we have developed and justified the best
ideals of justice, that we have successfully complemented and further
developed them into nonideal theory, and that we have taken account of
feasibility constraints and unintended consequences in action design, we
still need one more layer of work before justice can be realized: the stage
of the implementation of the justice-enhancing action. At this stage we
need to answer questions such as the following: how can we communi-
cate and implement the policies or strategies so as to earn the support of
the relevant agents? What aspects of the process of implementation are
important in their own right? And, what kind of processes are respectful
and democratic, or make optimal use of any untapped knowledge? There
exists some kind of “administrative” or “thin” approach to policy imple-
mentation that does not take into account the support of the relevant
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 351

agents, but virtually no policies can succeed if the relevant agents do not
comply with the policies and strategies. This may require processes of
participation, information, and involvement of the relevant population, so
that the policies and strategies are felt as “jointly owned” by both the
policy makers and the affected citizens. If the ideals of social justice re-
quire that certain unjust habits or social norms change, then one may
have to carefully consider how to set up this critique: will an internal or
external critique be most effective, what are the relevant emotional or
social-psychological mechanisms at work, and so forth. For example,
social justice advocacy stemming from outside the country in which the
change should take place, especially if the advocacy comes from coun-
tries that are (perceived to be) much more hegemonic, or that have a his-
tory of colonial domination, may be perceived as illegitimate by the af-
fected population. This may produce unintended consequences, which
may make a justice-enhancing strategy that looks fine on paper entirely
ineffective, or even counterproductive. While from a purely intellectual
or philosophical point of view the social justice advocacy may be en-
tirely valid and convincing, it nevertheless may have very negative ef-
fects if one does not consider the legitimacy and authority of the advo-
cates and implementers. Similar arguments have been made regarding
the often countereffective critiques by Western feminist philosophers on
gender inequalities in the global South.18 These kinds of implementation
issues raise very difficult questions related to political and identity-
related sensitivities and require anthropological insights that go far be-
yond the professional expertise of most political philosophers. Yet we
nevertheless should be aware that social justice-enhancing policy and
strategy implementations that do not respect these sensitivities and be-
havioral responses of those groups are likely to fail, and may even create
a social state that is more unjust.
The implementation stage raises still further issues. Sometimes, in
order to move towards the ideals of justice, it may be necessary to im-
plement policies and strategies that can be considered “illegitimate,”
since in the short term they are creating more injustice in dimension A,
while any potential justice gain in dimension B will only be in the me-
dium or long term and is not guaranteed. In other words, one needs to
sacrifice justice in one dimension here and now, in the hope of gaining
more justice in another dimension (and restoring justice in the first di-
mension) in the long term. Or, a variation on this problem: in the short
term we are sacrificing justice in dimension A for group X, hoping that

18
Alison Jaggar, “‘Saving Amina’: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dia-
logue,” in Andreas Follesdal and Thomas Pogge (eds.), Real World Justice (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2005), pp. 37-63.
352 Ingrid Robeyns

in the long term this will create a more just situation in the same dimen-
sion A for group Y (with the justice shortfall for Y being much larger
than for X).
In conclusion, the road from ideal principles to effective justice-
enhancing action is long and potentially thorny, and much work is
needed before ideal principles can effectively contributive to solving
problems of injustice. For ideal theorists of justice, the main lesson to
draw is that their work is only one part in a large chain before any
change of justice may be reached. If ideal theorists want to contribute to
justice-enhancing change in practice, then the point to take home is that
although ideal theorizing may be an essential piece of the work to be
done, it nevertheless remains only a small fraction of all the work that
needs to be done. This prompts questions about its academic status and
priority, and the time and other resources we should allocate to this kind
of work—questions that I will address in the concluding section of this
article.

3. Idealizing Assumptions in Ideal Theory

In the previous section, I defined ideal theory as the theory that works
out and justifies the principles of justice in a fully just society. Yet in the
literature, ideal theory is often confused with theory based on idealizing
assumptions, in particular, idealizing assumptions that are allegedly bad
idealizations. This confusion has nourished many critiques of ideal theory.
In order to create some analytical clarity, several questions need to be
asked regarding the role of idealizations in ideal theory. What are idealiza-
tions? How do idealizing assumptions relate to ideal theory? Are all ideali-
zations in ideal theory unwanted? If not, on what grounds could we distin-
guish between good and bad idealizing assumptions? And, what are the
problems created by these idealizations in the practice of ideal theory?

3.1. What are idealizations?

Idealizations are assumptions that describe certain aspects of a theory

differently from how they are in reality.19 These aspects are often related

19
The account that follows borrows from and builds on discussions at the ECPR joint
session, “Social Justice: Ideal Theory, Non-Ideal Circumstances,” Helsinki, May 2007
(see especially Valentini, “On the Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory,” and the papers by
Adam Swift and Zofia Stemplowska in this issue), and a range of definitions that have
been presented in the literature, including Onora O’Neill, “Abstraction, Idealization and
Ideology in Ethics,” in J.D.G. Evans (ed.), Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Prob-
lems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 55-69; Brighouse, Justice, p.
19; Schwartzman, “Abstraction, Idealization, and Oppression.”
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 353

to human beings, such as their character, motivations, and capacities.

Examples are Rawls’s assumptions that citizens are free and equal moral
persons who have two moral powers (the capacity for a sense of right
and justice, and the capacity to form and pursue a conception of the
good), and that these citizens are capable of taking part in social coopera-
tion for mutual advantage and desire to do so.20 Other idealizations con-
cern the nature of society. For example, Ronald Dworkin assumes in his
account of justice that society is closed without immigration flows. 21
Idealizations are simplifications. Often they depict reality as much
better than it is.22 For example, in working out his ideal principles of jus-
tice, Dworkin assumes that members of the society have authentic pref-
erences and that their actions and choices are never influenced by preju-
dice. That assumption makes people into morally better persons than
they really are, since we know that in reality our actions are influenced
by stereotypes and prejudices.23

3.2. How do idealizations relate to ideal theory?

Most—perhaps even all—ideal theories of justice make use of idealiza-

tions. In part this is because idealizations are forms of abstractions, and
the very nature of theory construction requires us to use abstractions.
Sometimes the use of idealizations is necessary to keep the complexity of
the theory within manageable boundaries. By introducing idealizations,
we reduce the number of parameters that the theory has to deal with. The
problem is similar to the solving of a set of equations in mathematics: if
there are too many unknown variables relative to the number of equa-
tions, then the set of equations cannot be solved and there is no solution
to the problem that the set of equations describes. Something similar
takes place in the construction of ideal theories of justice; we reduce the
complexity by making some aspects of society and of persons simpler,
and thereby often better than in reality. In that way we can focus on the
essence and get a grip on the complex set of questions.
Another important role for idealizations lies in the goal of ideal theory

20
John Rawls, “Social Unity and Primary Goods,” reprinted in John Rawls, Collected
Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp.
359-87, at p. 365.
21
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
22
Idealizations need not always present reality better than it is, as we will see below
in section 3.4, where I present the example of idealizations that are assuming away the
caring dimensions of personhood.
23
See the vast literature in social and cognitive psychology that has documented these
phenomena. For an overview study related to gender stereotypes and prejudice, see Virginia
Valian, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).
354 Ingrid Robeyns

itself, namely, to model desirable properties of the ideally just society.

Recall that ideal theory aims to give us the principles of justice that
would have to be met in a fully just society. In such a society, we
wouldn’t want people to act on prejudices and stereotypes. It therefore
makes sense to assume that in the perfectly just society such prejudice
and stereotypes would not exist: people would have authentic prefer-
ences and would not be motivated by stereotypes. This is precisely what
Dworkin does in his theory of equality of resources.24 While working out
the just distribution of resources, Dworkin assumes that the principles of
authenticity and independence would be met. The principle of authentic-
ity ensures that members of the immigrants’ society have authentic pref-
erences, while the principle of independence ensures that they do not
engage in actions or choices that are influenced by prejudice. Clearly
these idealizing assumptions have consequences for the ideal theoretical
principles that Dworkin develops. These two principles imply that
Dworkin’s egalitarian theory is developed in a context in which all so-
cially generated inequalities are assumed away. In his ideal theory,
Dworkin uses a tabula rasa approach whereby the newly built society
has no history of subordination of women, homophobia, slavery, class
domination, inequalities in inherited wealth, and other historical proc-
esses that have made the playing field unlevel in the real world here and
now.25 Ideal theorists of justice would rightly respond that it is necessary
to temporarily bracket details if one is dealing with complex questions of
justice in order to keep a grasp on the complexity of the theory. More-
over, these idealizations are arguably theoretically justified at the level of
ideal theory, since in a fully just society we would not see any of the ine-
qualities that Dworkin has assumed away when introducing his new so-
ciety in which people have no distorted preferences.
It is important to understand why we idealize. We assume away cer-
tain injustices and their causes since at the ideal level these injustices
should simply not occur. Examples are prejudices or slavery. If we have
strong first principles justifying why these factors can never be justified,
then we don’t need to theorize about the question whether they are just or
unjust; in other words, they don’t need to be part of the theory. If we all
agree that under any conceivable account of justice prejudices create in-
justices, then we know that at the level of ideal theory we can assume
these injustices away by introducing idealizations. In contrast, we cannot
introduce the idealization that everyone will earn the same hourly wage,
since it is not at all clear that this is what each and every plausible ac-

24
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue.
25
Roland Pierik and Ingrid Robeyns, “Resources Versus Capabilities: Social Endow-
ments in Egalitarian Theory,” Political Studies 55 (2007): 133-52, pp. 141-42.
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 355

count of justice requires: that is precisely what we need to work out

when theorizing about justice.
If all these arguments are sound, then we should conclude that ideali-
zations have a useful, probably even necessary, role to play in the con-
struction of ideal theories of justice. Why, then, is there so much resis-
tance against idealizations in ideal theory? Apart from possible unsound
reactions based on an allergy towards counterfactual thinking and highly
abstract reasoning, there are also at least two valid reasons. The first is
that the transition from ideal to nonideal theory is everything but
straightforward, and the more the ideal theory has been built upon ideali-
zations, the farther away it will be removed from offering us clear guid-
ance for the nonideal world. This problem is little discussed in the prac-
tice of ideal theory, which may, at least in the eyes of the critics of ideal
theory, create the impression that ideal theory is directly relevant to non-
ideal theory and to action design and implementation. The second prob-
lem is that not all idealizations serve a legitimate purpose such as those
discussed in this section; there are bad idealizations that cannot be theo-
retically justified. Since there has been very little discussion in the litera-
ture on what distinguishes useful from bad idealizations in ideal theory,
the presence of bad idealizations has been extrapolated into a general
critique on all idealizations in ideal theory, whether they are useful or
not. In what follows, we will discuss both problems in turn.

3.3. The transition from ideal to nonideal theory

By its very nature, ideal theory is an enterprise that is different from non-
ideal theory and justice-enhancing action design. Since ideal theory relies
on assumptions that are not met in reality—idealizations—its resulting
principles of justice cannot serve as principles for the nonideal world.
They need to be adapted or reinterpreted or further developed for the
nonideal world. There are several reasons why this is the case, some of
which are related to institutional or feasibility constraints.26 Here I want
to concentrate on a different problem, namely, what kind of principles
ideal theoretical principles are if they are the results of theorizing that

26
See, for example, Goodin, “Political Ideals and Political Practice,” for some argu-
ments related to feasibility constraints. A rather striking argument illustrating the limits to
implementing ideal-theoretical principles in the real world has been developed by Walter
Bossert and Marc Fleurbaey, who have mathematically proven that two very plausible
luck-egalitarian principles (similar to Dworkin’s principles of endowment-insensitivity
and ambition-sensitivity) cannot together be met in a society that meets some minimal
and realistic assumptions. To the best of my knowledge, these results have had no impact
at all on ideal theorizing about justice. Walter Bossert and Marc Fleurbaey, “Redistribu-
tion and Compensation,” Social Choice and Welfare 13 (1996): 343-55.
356 Ingrid Robeyns

has assumed away some important dimensions of injustice, that is, if the
theory includes some idealizations.
Take, for example, Dworkin’s principles of endowment insensitivity
and choice sensitivity.27 We cannot implement these principles directly
in the present world, since in the present world the choices that we make
are not as “pure” as they are in Dworkin’s theory. Recall that Dworkin
assumes that in the ideal just society our preferences are independent of
influences by other people, and that we do not make choices and deci-
sions based on prejudice or stereotypes. If we were to implement
Dworkin’s ideal theoretical principles directly, we would not be able to
take into account the fact that our choices are so influenced by injustice-
creating factors, such as adaptive preference-formation mechanisms. The
Dworkinian ideal-theoretical principles of endowment insensitivity and
choice sensitivity are constructed based on the assumption that there are
no stereotypes and morally relevant preference-formation mechanisms; if
we were to implement these without further adaptation for the nonideal
world, then we would not be able to account for the fact that our choices
are influenced by injustice-generating factors.28
Of course, Dworkin has not just developed ideal theory, but has also
done work at what could be taken to be the nonideal level. This part of
Dworkin’s theory is called “the theory of improvement,” and would thus
do what we are expecting nonideal theory to do. Dworkin’s theory of
improvement takes the ideal egalitarian distribution of resources and its
liberty/constraints baseline as a benchmark and develops a number of
proposals for egalitarian improvement in our unjust, nonideal world.29
The theory of improvement advocates measures to reduce a person’s “eq-
uity deficit,” which is the shortfall between what a person would be enti-
tled to under the ideal egalitarian distribution and her actual situation. An
equity deficit consists of two components: a “resource deficit,” which is
the difference between the quantity of resources that equality of re-
sources would allocate to a person and the quantity that she actually has,
and a “liberty deficit,” which is the total of liberties guaranteed by the
liberty/constraints baseline that are not secured in reality.30
27
The following paragraphs are based on joint work with Roland Pierik; see Pierik
and Robeyns, “Resources Versus Capabilities.”
28
One could also wonder whether, if such ideal-theoretical principles were implemented
in the real world, they would work in favor of the most powerful members of society, those
that are not subjected to prejudiced stereotypes or harming preference-formation mecha-
nisms. See the discussion (which concerns ideal theory in general and not Dworkin in
particular) in Schwartzman, “Abstraction, Idealization, and Oppression,” p. 571.
29
The liberty/constraints baseline is a set of five principles that Dworkin presents as
an integral part of his egalitarian theory, and includes the principles of independence and
authenticity. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 147-66.
30
Ibid., p. 164.
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 357

Dworkin’s theory of improvement does indeed contain detailed elabo-

rations of ways to deal with resource deficits in actual societies, for ex-
ample, for health care insurance and welfare.31 But he does not tell us
how liberty deficits can be rectified or compensated for. Dworkin argues
that the principle of independence seems to be “an appropriate means” to
deal with prejudice and thus is a “general feature” of the conception of
equality of resources.32 Yet, he does not develop this principle into actual
public policies. Dworkin does not engage with actual and well-known
examples of equity deficits, such as those resulting from the gendered
structures of society, or from racial prejudice. In chapters 11 and 12 of
Sovereign Virtue he discusses whether affirmative action is an effective
policy against prejudice, and whether it is deemed constitutional by the
current members of the U.S. Supreme Court, but he does not discuss
these issues in the light of the principle of independence or other aspects
of his ideal theory. Dworkin’s theory of improvement does not directly
guide us in solving issues of sociocultural inequality or cases in which
cultural and economic inequalities interact. Before we can solve these
questions, we need to make the transition from ideal theory to nonideal
theory. One way to do this is to further develop Dworkin’s notion of en-
dowment to include social endowments, which would pick up the effects
of stereotyping and group-based preference-formation mechanisms that
are bracketed by idealizations.33
More generally, the problem is not that idealizations are not accept-
able at the ideal level, but rather that we need to know how to deal with
the idealization when moving to the nonideal level. At the ideal level, the
idealizations assume away those alterable causes of injustice that would
be entirely eradicated in the fully just society, and we concentrate on de-
riving and justifying principles regarding the other injustices. But what
does this imply for the nonideal world? Do we have to wait on solving
the latter until we have reached the former, for example, until we have
guaranteed all basic liberties and no one holds prejudiced views?
What would be the appropriate way to deal with ideal theoretical
principles at the nonideal level? One possibility would be to first work
towards a society in which the injustices that are assumed away by means
of idealizing assumptions would no longer exist, before we work on real-
izing the other principles of justice. But that would be an unfortunate
strategy, since we know from research in social and cognitive psychol-
ogy that many of the causal mechanisms underlying these injustices are

31
Ibid., pp. 307-50.
32
Ibid., p. 162.
33
Pierik and Robeyns, “Resources Versus Capabilities,” p. 143; Pierik, “Reparations
for Luck-Egalitarians.”
358 Ingrid Robeyns

very persistent. So we can’t just wait until the idealizations have materi-
alized in the real world. But we also can’t implement ideal theoretical
principles in nonideal circumstances, since these are designed for situa-
tions under certain conditions that are not met and may therefore have
unwanted unintended consequences (such as worsening rather than en-
hancing justice) when implemented in a world in which these idealizing
conditions are not met. In sum, the transition from ideal principles to
nonideal circumstances is anything but straightforward.

3.4. Bad idealizations

The second problem that idealizations in ideal theory may cause is that
some of them may turn out to be bad idealizations that do not serve le-
gitimate purposes such as those previously discussed. Bad idealizations
are those that do not serve to model a certain absence of injustice at the
level of ideal theory in cases in which this is theoretically justified, as in
the case of Dworkin’s assumptions of authentic preferences and the ab-
sence of prejudice and stereotyping. Bad idealizations amount to ignor-
ing the existence of certain forms of injustice that need to be theorized
rather than simply ignored in the theorizing. Often this amounts to leav-
ing out aspects of life that are more relevant for some groups in society
than for others. These idealizations are often not explicitly indicated in
the form of assumptions or background conditions, but rather creep into
the theory and require careful reading in order to become visible.
An example is the idealization of the conception of the person by as-
suming that he is not dependent for care upon others, nor constrained in
his actions and plans of life by caring duties. Idealizations related to the
need to receive and give care are not the kind of idealizations that are
justified as appropriate on the grounds that in the fully just society these
needs would no longer exist, as is the case of prejudice and stereotypes.
Rather, the inevitable fact of human dependency on the care of others
makes the just distribution of care (both at the receiving and giving end)
an important aspect that a theory of justice, both at the ideal and the non-
ideal level, should work out. The fact of human dependence on the care
of others is like the fact of human mortality: both are facts that no serious
comprehensive theory can ignore. Care is not something that can be as-
sumed away through idealizations; rather, it has to be confronted upfront,
so that the theory can help us to work out what in a just society the prin-
ciples would be that would regulate just caring. Introducing a conception
of personhood that assumes away care is a bad idealization, since it can-
not be justified as an idealization that reflects an ideal principle of justice
(as in the case of idealizations regarding the absence of stereotypes).
One could object to this argument as follows. Idealizing away care
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 359

would be an example of bad ideal theory only if the theory aspired to say
something about care, but not if the theory is a partial theory intended to
work out the principles of some other domain of justice. Yet this can
only be a viable defense if there are no significant spillover effects from
the domains in which care operates to the domains for which the partial
theory is intended to work out ideal theoretical principles. For example,
Rawls’s theory of justice aims to work out the principles of political jus-
tice for the basic structure of society; but his neglect of care could only
be justified if he were to first show that care is morally irrelevant to is-
sues of political justice and the basic structure of society. The arguments
presented in the literature on justice and care make it rather doubtful that
such an argument could be successfully developed.34
These bad idealizations can perhaps also explain why some critics of
ideal theory argue that it serves an ideological function.35 Take again the
example of care. In present-day societies, care is not equally distributed
between all individuals: women perform much more care than men (both
paid and unpaid), and among the paid careworkers, immigrants, lower-
class women, and women of color are overrepresented. Therefore, if a
theory of justice introduces an idealization that brackets away care, for
example by introducing a conception of the person which assumes that
people are fully independent (i.e., have no dependents and are not de-
pendent for their well-being on care delivered by others), or by excluding
from the scope of justice those institutions in which the distribution of
care is to a large extent determined (e.g., the family), then these idealiza-
tions will be biased against the groups who are arguably treated unjustly
with respect to the distribution of care in our nonideal circumstances.
This idealization works to the advantage of those who are benefiting
from the current unjust arrangements related to the distribution of care,
and in that sense it can be argued that it creates an ideological bias in the
theory, even if there is not the slightest intention of introducing such a
bias on the part of the theorist.

3.5. Implications

If the above analysis is sound, then at least three things follow. First,
ideal theorists should much more explicitly recognize the limitations of
ideal theory, and warn their readers that nothing automatically follows
from their theory for the real world. In practice, ideal theorists generally

34
See, e.g., Eva Feder Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and De-
pendency (New York: Routledge, 1999); Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family; Nuss-
baum, Frontiers of Justice; Diemut Bubeck, Care, Gender, and Justice (Oxford, Claren-
don Press, 1995).
35
For example, Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology.”
360 Ingrid Robeyns

don’t do this. Instead they sometimes play with real-life examples that
create the false impression that their theories could be applied in non-
ideal circumstances, where the idealizations are not a reality. I think that
the dangers of not being much more explicit about the kind of theory one
is producing, and whether or not it can be applied to the real world, are
dramatically underestimated. These dangers include potentially harmful
policies and actions in the real world, but also a counterproductive de-
velopment in the literature on theories of justice, where scholars are talk-
ing at cross-purposes and where limited time and energies are directed
towards developing critiques that are missing the mark.
In the absence of such explicit discussion of the limits of ideal theo-
rizing, it is not surprising that several critics of ideal theory have criti-
cized ideal theory for its unacceptable implications in the real world. The
most influential example of such a critique of ideal theories is probably
Elizabeth Anderson’s critique of luck egalitarianism.36 Defenders of ideal
theory are right, in my view, when pointing out that Anderson is not
criticizing ideal theory for the kind of theory it is, and that therefore her
critique is misdirected.37 Yet, I would also argue that in their practice
ideal theorists should much more explicitly give warning about the limi-
tations of their theory, and what (if any) the implications are for the real
world. The misdirected nature of these critiques is in that sense a shared
responsibility.
The second implication concerns the importance of thinking carefully
about whether the idealizations that are introduced can be justified at the
ideal level. Idealizations that serve to model the absence of injustices in the
fully just society are acceptable at the level of ideal theory; idealizations
that do not meet this function, and instead introduce ideological biases
such as those that are implicit in the concept of the person, are bad ide-
alizations and should not be allowed in the construction of ideal theories.
Third, this section has once again highlighted the importance of non-
ideal theorizing of justice. Ideal theory surely has an important role to
play, but is far from sufficient, since there is no straight bridge between
ideal theory and guidance of actions. We need nonideal theory, and we
have to examine whether we can use the resources offered by ideal the-
ory to work out a set of principles for how to proceed in situations in
which idealizing assumptions are not met. Sometimes nonideal theory is
taken to be a straightforward application of ideal theory, yet the above
analysis has also highlighted that nonideal theory has a much more im-
portant role to fulfill in normative theorizing of justice.

36
Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287-337.
37
See, e.g., Swift, “The Value of Philosophy in Nonideal Circumstances.”
 Ideal Theory in Theory and Practice 361

4. Conclusion: Ideal Theory in Practice

In this article I have analyzed the relations between ideal theory and ide-
alizations, and I have discussed what I regard as the pitfalls of certain
forms of ideal theory. The conclusion I have reached is that ideal theory
plays a limited role: it looks like the Paradise Island where we ideally
would like to be, but it does not tell us how to get closer to the island.
That work has to be done by nonideal theory, and justice-enhancing ac-
tion design and implementation.
Perhaps there is a tacit understanding among ideal theorists that eve-
ryone knows these limitations. Indeed, some would even say that one has
to be pretty uninformed not to know these limitations. Yet if that is the
case, why do we see the publication of a significant number of articles
that do not acknowledge these limitations and pitfalls while using a writ-
ing style suggesting that the theory is of direct guiding use for justice-
enhancing change? Moreover, as I highlighted in section 2, normative
work on social justice encompasses a range of disciplines and fields. If
ideal theorists want to produce theories that are action-guiding in the real
world, and want to avoid the dismissive reactions of nonideal theorists or
scholars working on effective justice-enhancing strategies that these ideal
theories are of no use in reality, then they have to be much more upfront
about the limitations of ideal theory, and invest much more time and ef-
fort into working out how ideal theory can be developed into nonideal
theory and ultimately into action design and implementation.
Much of contemporary post-Rawlsian theoretical work on justice has
proceeded in this fashion: first, by assuming that ideal theory is justified
since it would be fundamental for nonideal theory; and second, by limit-
ing their work to ideal theory, often without telling the readers where to
look for the nonideal work that is needed to provide a solution to the
real-world problems, and without warnings about the strict limitations of
what the ideal theoretical analyses imply for the real world. In addition,
while ideal theorists may be quick in pointing out that policy proposals
have no sound philosophical principles, and that therefore applied schol-
ars should pay more attention to their theoretical work, they often do not
seem to think that symmetrical scholarly obligations rest on them to ask
how useful their ideal theories are for real life problems or what kind of
theory is needed in order for it to significantly contribute to enhancing
justice. Ideal theorists would do well to acknowledge, in their scholarly
practice, these limitations of ideal theory—at any rate more than is cur-
rently the case.
What do we need in order to take this debate forward in a constructive
manner? First, we need to sort out the proper definitions and descriptions
of ideal and nonideal theory. This paper has made a modest contribution
362 Ingrid Robeyns

to this need to sort out their precise goals, by providing a simple typol-
ogy of normative work on social justice. Second, part of the confusion in
the literature is based on the fact that ideal theory is often confused with
theory based on idealizations. On the one hand the above analysis shows
that these are two different issues, yet on the other hand in practice they
often run together. We need to further investigate their relationship.
Third, we need to further analyze and debate in what sense the role of
ideal theory is limited. Fourth, we need to work through more cases of
flawed idealizations, in order to better understand when and why ideali-
zations are bad or unwanted, and when and why they are useful. We also
need to understand better under which conditions principles of ideal the-
ory are countereffective if one tries to implement them in the real world.
Fifth, much more work needs to be done on developing nonideal theory,
and on better understanding what is needed for nonideal theory to pro-
vide an effective bridge between ideal theory and action design and im-
plementation. Sixth, we need to look critically at how we are socializing
students: do we stress the importance of the aesthetic appeal of theories,
or rather stress their direct or indirect practical use? Finally, we may
need to question the current hierarchical status of ideal theory. We have
to ask whether the professional culture within political philosophy and
the incentive structures in academic institutions, including the reputa-
tions of journals and implicit and explicit value judgments about differ-
ent kinds of theory (i.e., more versus less abstract, “pure,” formal, and so
forth) steer us disproportionally into the direction of ideal theory. I con-
tend that this is the case, but would be more than happy to be proven
wrong.38

Ingrid Robeyns
Department of Political Science
Radboud University Nijmegen
www.ingridrobeyns.nl

38
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the ECPR joint session on “Social
Justice: Ideal Theory, Non-Ideal Circumstances,” Helsinki, May 2007, at the Nijmegen
Political Theory Workshop, September 2007, and at the Dutch Research School for Prac-
tical Philosophy (OZSE), October 2007. For comments and discussions I would like to
thank Harry Brighouse, Nick Ferreira, Pablo Gilabert, Bob Goodin, Hugh Lazenby, Ro-
land Pierik, Amartya Sen, Zofia Stemplowska, Adam Swift, Laura Valentini, Wibren van
der Burg, Marcel Wissenburg, the editors of this journal, and an anonymous referee. Fi-
nancial support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) is much
appreciated.